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Happiness or Success - which comes first?

| Action for Happiness

Many believe that happiness comes with "success", in terms of a
glittering career, big salary, beautiful house, expensive car and
so on. Now although these external things certainly don't guarantee
happiness (and often bring the opposite), there's definitely some
truth that we get satisfaction from our successful accomplishments
- like a job well done.

But actually research is showing that the more important
relationship between success and happiness may be the other way
around. People who are happy tend to be more successful at whatever
it is they're doing - for example they have better health, are more
productive and have better relationships with others. And as a
result, happier people also bring huge benefits to their
organisations too. Here's a rather nice infographic about happiness
and success and why happier people - and their organisations - tend
to be more successful.

Harvard School of Public Health examined 200 separate research
studies on psychological wellbeing and cardiovascular health.

Optimism and positive emotion were found to provide protection against cardiovascular disease, to slow progression of heart disease and reduce risk, by around 50%, of experiencing a cardiovascular event, such as a heart attack.